Stranger In A Strange Land Called Chicago

A friend in the capital, Tashkent, was ringing to tell us that Ortiqali--our host during 1994, the year we lived in the Central Asian republic--would be arriving in New York on Tuesday.

Holy cow.

My husband, Russell, an anthropologist, had sent an invitation and ticket money to our friend in the small cotton-farming village several months ago, but I didn't really think Ortiqali would ever make it. It's not that I didn't want him here; I just thought that between governmental bureaucracy (in both countries) and work on the farm, he'd never get the chance.

Then there was the issue of culture shock. This was a 53-year-old man who had rarely left his village except for two years in the '60s when he was serving in the Soviet army in East Germany.

Although this teacher and farmer has electricity in his mud and straw-based house, in most other ways his life is not much different from that of a 19th Century American.

The culture shock we felt, living in Ortiqali's home while doing my husband's anthropological fieldwork, was one thing. It was the kind of change you accept, coping with antibiotics and a sense of humor. Then you go home and feel grateful.

But his would be different. He would see a world that was so different, more sanitary and more technologically advanced than his own, that it might send him home with nothing but a profound sense of sorrow and backwardness. Still, there was nothing that could be done at this point and so we rolled with it.

While, during his three-week stay in the U.S., he didn't seem to fall prey to the kind of paralyzing culture shock that we had feared, he shared these observations.

- Like many foreign visitors, Ortiqali was awed by our supermarkets, and insisted on taking pictures, especially in the meat section. But at the shopping mall, he seemed anxious. Finally he said to us in Uzbek, "All these stores are great, but where do you buy animals (cows, goats, sheep, chickens, etc.)?"

- He was a little puzzled by the herds of decorated cows on Michigan Avenue. We explained they are "art." He repeated the word back to himself, not quite won over to the concept.

- As fits Uzbek custom, Ortiqali arrived with lots of gifts (decorative knives, decorative bread, pointy slippers, a tea set, Uzbek clothing and a singing stuffed animal for our son) but only one change of clothing for himself. This was in the middle of a heat wave. My husband laid out a new outfit for him every day, but getting the clothes back to wash was a little trickier. Ortiqali protested, saying, "But I only wore it twice."

- As we drove to a friend's house one night, he spent almost an entire roll of film on snapshots through the car window of seemingly ugly and ordinary objects: a high school, a strip mall and a traffic jam. He explained that they were all beautiful to him.

- During his stay we were invited to a dinner at the house of Indian friends who spoke Russian, Ortiqali's second language. As the host attentively refilled our drinks and made us comfortable, he explained to Ortiqali that in India there is a saying that "The guest is like a god." Ortiqali responded by telling him that in Uzbekistan there is similar saying that "The guest is higher than the father." An American dinner guest added that Americans also have a saying on the subject: "Guests are like fish," he said. "After three days, they start to stink." This was funny to everyone, except Ortiqali, who was on his third day with us.

- Although he'd heard that gender roles were much wider here, Ortiqali was surprised that I work five days a week while my husband, a professor teaching one summer-school class, mostly stayed home, took care of our baby and did housework. He tried to pretend that he accepted it but still wanted to get a picture of Russell doing dishes to show the folks back home.

- He was amazed at our access to all the fresh hot and cold water we wanted from beautiful (yet standard) fixtures and asked if everyone in our building had fixtures this nice. But washing dishes, which are rinsed with cold stream water or ashes in his village, was not exactly his forte. We had to discourage him from helping us as politely as we could or else rewash the dishes when he wasn't looking.

- People work very hard in his village, but Ortiqali was surprised that our "technologically advanced" society would still require me to work such "long hours." Certainly I couldn't spend that entire eight-hour day working straight through, he figured. So one day he asked, "Do you have a place to take naps at your job?"

- Ortiqali was amazed by our skyscrapers and, indeed, felt plenty of fear while dining on the 95th floor of the John Hancock building. But in terms of architecture, he was most impressed by our private homes and the variety of styles that are "permitted." "They are all different," he said. "In the Soviet Union all of our housing looks alike."